How best to narrow down the number of candidates for a job to select the best person for the role? And how long does the selection process need to be?  

Top-flight candidates for software engineering, AI or data science roles are looking for a short, focused, selection process which affords them the opportunity to speak to a CTO or hiring manager as early in the process as possible.

Employers need to put forward the strongest person in a team to sell the role and the company, to fully engage that excellent candidate, and so ensure he/she is motivated to spend time on a follow-up skills-based assessment.

Richard Wheeler recommends:

“spend time upfront tailoring the selection process to reflect every aspect of the remit and what constitutes a right-fit candidate. Consider the minimum that needs to be in place to assess this. Then ensure that what follows is smart, proportionate and candidate-aware: a quick interview turnaround with each stage laser-sharp, instructive, efficient.”

What Constitutes a Smart Selection Process?  

A smart selection process would allow the employer to know who they want to hire after just two stages. Why would it need to take five, six or even seven different stages? The two stages would be a 30-minute virtual call, followed by a face-to-face interview incorporating a technical assessment (some companies usefully incorporate an assignment that is completed before this interview, the bones of which are then presented, Q&A’d in the meeting) and an interview with the CTO/decision maker together with a group meeting. All completed in 2 hours.

Such a process is popular with candidates who want to get to the ‘meat’ of an interview as quickly as possible; further, the tailoring of recruitment in this way points favourably to the company’s professionalism and seriousness; it also compares well with more generic approaches requiring a lengthier process, and a protracted period to learn if they will receive a job offer or not. Crucially, this is an advantageous model in a tight employment market; even more so when things change to more of a sellers’ market.

Granted. There are notable variations to this model, one being if the company has an HR resource. Some such businesses begin the process with an HR interview though, for reasons already mentioned, retaining the model where candidates speak with a CTO/equivalent at an early stage is important. An HR interview would then mark the very end of the interview process.

Interviews and Technical Tests  

A longer, role-specific, real world, coding exercise/assignment is often used as part of a second stage interview. This strategy is more effective if a candidate knows they are at the final stage and are fully engaged with the opportunity, the product, company and key people in the team. For the employer, it is likely there will only be a few candidates selected to go through to the final stage, so the time needed to assess tests will not be as great.

Interestingly. According to global research by TestGorilla, 88% of tech companies use skills-based hiring. Of these: 59% use role-specific tests; 55% use cognitive ability tests; 38% use tests based on work samples; 37% use a mixture of testing measures.

The relatively high % using role-specific tests is not a surprise and tallies with our own experience. Devising such a test based on real world scenarios specific to the company’s actual business is engaging and as previously touched on, viewed favourably. Its usefulness however is geared more to software development. For technical positions outside of pure software development (eg data scientists, pre-sales, algorithm development etc) tweaking the process so that the initial 30-minute virtual interview is extended and is more of a thorough technical assessment - followed by the 2-hour F2F group interview - is a better model.

NB For a candidate, being asked to spend valuable time on a technical test before having the opportunity to ask questions about a job or find out further information can put off some people from continuing with the process. At RWA, we are confident of being able to prepare the ground powerfully and professionally in advance of whatever interview model is used.

Best Practice

Best practice will always include transparency about the length and various stages of the whole hiring process. This is important for candidates to understand from the beginning, and for employers in a competitive labour market to have fully considered.

Find out more about our technical recruitment consultancy and get answers to your questions on an exploratory - no obligation - Teams call with Richard Wheeler.